Special education is the practice of educating students with “special needs” in a way that addresses their individual differences and needs. The term “special needs” is used to collectively define those individuals that require assistance due to physical, mental, behavioral, or medical disabilities or delays. Special education typically involves an individualized education plan (IEP), specially adapted equipment and materials, and other interventions.
Over the past few decades, methodologies for identifying and techniques for teaching special needs children have improved greatly. As the demand for special needs education has increased, educators have continued to develop specialized teaching aids and training tools to enhance the effectiveness of and/or reduce the cost of a student's IEP. Many specialized teaching aids are costly and/or complex enough to require training or supervision by a special educational professional. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a specialized teaching aid that can be manufactured and sold very inexpensively, and used by a student without training or supervision by a special education professional.
Apart from traditional subjects such as English, mathematics and history, many special needs students require assistance learning fine motor skills or life skills. For life skills, the skill level of special needs students can vary greatly. Many special education teaching aids have fixed training tools that are inappropriate for a particular skill level. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a specialized teaching aid having life-skills training tools that can be adjusted to meet the needs of a wide variety of students.
In the prior art, some special education teaching aids have personal life-skills training tools affixed to various platforms, which are designed to be mounted on either a table top or wall. The student interacts with the training tools from a distal spatial relationship and a third-party perspective compared to real life. In other words, when using the training tool, the student is trained to groom a third person instead of himself. For example, prior art teaching aids may have a tool that simulates tying shoelaces; however, in the prior art, the tool is oriented so that the student learns from the perspective of tying a third party's shoes. For the student to use this skill in real life to tie his/her own shoes, the student must juxtapose what he/she has learned using the training tool. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a specialized teaching aid that does not require the student to juxtapose the skill acquired from using the teaching aid when the student applies the skill in real life.